In a small town where mornings smelled of dew and the evenings hummed with crickets, there lived a boy named Dave. He was the kind of child who noticed things most people overlooked the flicker of a butterfly wing, the rhythm of rain on rooftops, the quiet hum of machines.

But above all, Dave loved one thing more than anything else: computers.

While most kids played outside chasing footballs or riding bikes, Dave could often be found at the town library, his nose buried in books with titles like “Learn to Code in Scratch!” or “The Basics of Binary.” He was only ten, but he dreamed big, he wanted to become a software programmer, someone who could build worlds out of logic, code, and imagination.

On the day this story begins, Dave had been invited to his cousin’s wedding. Dressed in a miniature suit, his tie slightly too big, he stood beneath the bright sky, his hair brushed to the side just the way his mom liked. The photographer called out, “Say cheese!” but Dave wasn’t listening.

He was staring into the clouds, eyes wide, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

“What are you thinking about?” his older sister Lizzy asked, nudging him.

Dave grinned. “I just figured it out. If the sun had a language, I bet it would be written in code, light code. Like binary, but brighter.”

His sister rolled her eyes, but the photographer caught the moment that glimmer of joy, that spark of discovery. It became one of those rare photographs that captured more than a face it captured a dream.

Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/boy-first-communion-child-communion-117025/

That night, after all the dancing and laughter had faded, Dave sat on his bed with his laptop an old hand-me-down from his uncle and typed out his first line of HTML. It was a small step, a simple:

Hello, World!

But to Dave, it felt like he had just sent a message to the universe.

From that night on, he learned something new every day. He watched videos about Python, JavaScript, and even started tinkering with simple games in Scratch. He joined online forums, built his own website about local birds, and once even created a chatbot that responded to silly jokes.

Of course, not everyone understood his passion. Some kids at school called him “Robot Boy.” His dad, a mechanic, worried it wasn’t a “real job.” But Dave didn’t let it break him. Whenever he felt discouraged, he would pull out the photo from that wedding the one where he was smiling up at the light and remember how he felt that day: limitless.

One rainy afternoon, Dave entered a junior coding competition hosted by a nearby tech company. The theme was “Solve a real-world problem with code.” Dave thought hard. What could he build that really mattered?

Then it hit him.

His little brother, Drake, had trouble speaking. What if Dave could create an app that turned simple drawings into spoken words a voice for those who couldn’t speak clearly? He stayed up night after night, watching tutorials, debugging errors, and sometimes falling asleep at his desk with lines of code flashing on the screen.

Weeks later, at the final presentation, Dave stood nervously in front of the judges. He clicked Run… and the app worked. His brother Drake drew a heart, and the computer said, “I love you.”

The room went quiet.

Then came the applause.

Dave didn’t win first place — he came in second. But something more important happened. One of the judges, a young software developer named Victoria, approached him afterward.

“You remind me of me,” she said. “Would you like a mentor?”

Dave’s eyes lit up like a code console in the dark. “Yes. Yes, please!”

From that moment on, his world expanded internships, real projects, mentorship, and more importantly, the belief that his dreams were not just possible, but necessary.

Years later, Dave would go on to build software used in schools to help kids learn how to code especially kids from small towns like his, kids with dreams bigger than their surroundings.

But he always kept that photo the one of him as a boy in a suit, smiling into the sky on his desk. A reminder that the future starts with wonder. That every line of code is a whisper of potential. That even light has a language, and he was born to speak it.

Thank you all so much for reading, one love to everyone and always chase your dreams 🚀❤️